Space research is necessary, and participation in an internationally cooperative manned space program to support research and development of beneficial space-based science and commercial endeavors is a legitimate national priority. Bush’s $16 billion-per-year program to return to the Moon, just beginning to sink into what will no doubt become over-run spending, has no priority or benefit, other than the chance that a rare element for power production might be found and exploitable there, according to an expert quoted in the New York Times. It will also mean billions to Bush’s industrial base, but there are more legitimate challenges for spending to benefit that sector’s growth. Government investment in technology and science must focus on understanding the environment and its systems, to better prepare for, avert, and sustain recovery from the devastation that, as an unavoidable part of its dynamic, cannot be averted.

As the money begins to flow, more news about the program comes to attention, but very little of it addresses any benefit of such a costly outlay of limited resources. Why is that? Could it be because there really is no benefit, aside from those who get the contracts and those who deliver them? Two decades or so ago, I was a guest in the Key Largo, Florida home of former Apollo 8 astronaut, Frank Borman, and he emphatically said to me, “We’ll never go back to the Moon. It’s too expensive and there’s no reason to go.” What’s changed? Solid reasons and benefits should be ahead of the commitment and spending, not a possible, wishful, or Bush-contrived postscript to them.

Every industrial segment Bush targets for the tilt of the federal purse is another misplaced priority. The fantasy $230 billion for the new Moon project will begin to mushroom into a reality that will be astronomically far beyond that, beginning with Lockheed Martin’s development of the Apollo-like Orion. Meanwhile, astronomers and “anti-collision” engineering researchers, operating under a tiny trickle of the money shower primed to fall on Lockheed, have only found an estimated half of the large asteroid bodies that can wipe out or seriously reduce civilization as we know it, and they have nothing in the pipeline to deal with the threat. And, suddenly perturbed, fast-moving comets can’t even be found to be tracked, long-term. They just show up, and the means to deal with them must be at hand for a relatively quick response. Now, and in the foreseeable future, when a comet or asteroid is found heading Earth’s way, there will be nothing that can be done to stop it, given the current funding and planning. We are laid open and totally unprepared, with the only option to be an announcement that emergency steps are underway that may be able to, or might prevent, or should do this or that, or “the government will do all that can possibly be done, etc.” It will be a frantic scramble with a hopeful, yet dubious outcome. Or worse, there will be no time for a scramble, except into a hole in the ground for all the good that’ll do.

While it is true that co-ed astronauts on Mars and the Moon may be an excuse as insurance against the complete eradication of the species, that is not the most cost-effective or utilitarian method to apply to a problem which will, someday, face the world’s population. A priority that is in the best interest of the taxpayers, and their children, would designate a major portion of the space budget toward finding and tracking all the threats, and to full-time development and deployment of a reliable system to deal with the multi-faceted danger when it arises, as it one day will. Only after that is done should large-scale spending and effort on manned exploration beyond the ISS and/or off-world colonization be considered. That would be sensible and responsible prioritization, and it would be the kind of level-headed, responsive leadership of which Bush is incapable. His culpable leadership, now touching space science, is only concerned with the targeted industrial funding recipients and the painting of himself in the hues of the past Kennedy success.

Named after the ancient Roman God of War, Mars has been at the burning core of mankind's speculation and fear about life in the Universe since the first telescope powerful enough to discern its polar ice caps was pointed at it in the night sky. A century past, and Percival Lowell looked beyond the astonishing implications of the polar caps and the fascination of Mars' warm, reddish color, and from observations made with his new observatory, he perceived canals. The succession of increasingly more-refined pictures of our sister planet had fueled the belief that life, even intelligent life, threatening life, peered back across the blackness of space at us... until the first satellite flybys hinted at the barren, hostile nature of its actual environment.

On Independence Day, 1997, the genius of American science, engineering and technology established an operational outpost on Mars' ancient, rocky Ares Vallis flood plain, that not only marked the beginning of a new administrative and fiscal approach to planetary study and the search for life on Mars and beyond, but became the pathfinder for an increasingly ambitious string of automated invaders for the next decade.

After almost three months of exploration, on September 27, 1997 the Pathfinder spacecraft went silent and the mission was declared officially completed... and successful, to a point far beyond the most ambitious hopes of project scientists. The information returned on atmospherics, magnetics, soil and rock analysis, and the pictures, will all be studied for the next several years.

We celebrated the bi-centennial, Roswell UFO anniversary by turning the tables on those who would think of the Human Race as a backward civilization that waits to be either conquered or enlightened by extraterrestrials who, in their presumed superiority, are assumed to have achieved advanced, technological miracles we cannot hope to equal. And, this is only the beginning. Before the year 2012, NASA is hoping to achieve a return of geological samples to Earth, and beyond that, to achieve a manned landing that will ultimately place up to six scientist explorers on the Martian surface for 18 months, and to be successful, many life-support, system engineering, resource development and physiological problems are being addressed that must be resolved.

Progress on the subsequent Mars missions, which will be planned based on evaluations of Pathfinder's discoveries, Global-Surveyor data still being retrieved, and data from the landers and orbiters planned for the next two decades, will be reported on this page as circumstances permit.

At the very top of the page is the Hubble Space Telescope global image of Mars, taken in the March 2001 opposition, highlighting the North Pole. The red marker overlayed onto it is Pathfinder's landing site. Below is the remarkable Mars global view highlighting the South Pole, also provided by the Hubble Space Telescope, this one in the August 2003 opposition, when Mars was the closest to Earth that it had been for the past 60,000 years, some 34.6 million miles.

Aside from the Phoenix lander’s landmark discovery of water ice and soil nutrients abundant enough for microbe or plant life, other major items topping the news on Martian discoveries over the last several years include: a comparison of 2004-2005 survey photos taken from orbit proves that subsurface water does exist, irregularly erupting to flow down gullies. The same photo comparisons also reveal that the surface is absorbing meteor impacts, leaving craters in such numbers that it could be hazardous for any surface-colonization environments. The Martian atmosphere, being much thinner than Earth’s, allows many meteors to get through to the surface which, entering Earth’s atmosphere, would burn up before striking to form cratering.

At the same time that the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) was receiving data during Spirit's landing, the MGS MOC obtained this oblique wide-angle view (above), looking east across the Martian surface toward Gusev Crater, the site where the MER-A landed. The image is labeled to show the location of Gusev Crater, the arrow pointing approximately to the Spirit touched-down spot. The Gusev Crater (165-km/103-mi diameter) and the Spirit landing site are located near 14.70°S, 184.60°W.

A mosaic of Spirit's first images, returned after a safe drop-and-bounce landing, only days after European Space Agency Mars loss. Image above, the first group mosaic, is linked to JPL Mars Rover home page. Below, the first color image, returned January 6, 2004; and below that, a closeup, at JPL resolution, of the first color image.

The next visitor to the planet, Surveyor 2001, launched on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral on April 7, 2001, at 11:02 a.m., and on May 23 was 14.3 million kilometers (8.9 million miles) from Earth, traveling at a speed of about 29
kilometers per second (about 65,700 miles per hour) relative to the Sun, and on time to enter Martian orbit on October 24. NASA has dubbed the mission 2001 Mars Odyssey in recognition of the Arthur C. Clarke Novel/Stanley Kubric movie 2001 - A Space Odyssey, and the expectations that they excited for the future of space travel and exploration.

A successful, 82-second, en-route trajectory-correction burn used minimal fuel, which will allow JPL to devote more fuel to orbital mission trajectories and provide greater mission flexibility.

After a perfectly executed and on-time arrival, Odyssey will remain in the arrival-navigation phase until a circular orbit is attained by aero-braking and the science mission can begin, which is now forecast for early February.

Odyssey carries three instruments for carrying out critical mission objectives: an emission imaging system (THEMIS), a gamma ray spectrometer (GRS), and the Mars Radiation Environment Experiment (MARIE). The primary objectives are to determine the nature of any radiation hazard to astraunauts, gain insights into Martian geological characteristics and processes, and to identify minerals and measure hydrogen to interpolate theories on the possible presence of water.

2003

In light of the 1999 mission losses, NASA implemented new management and mission procedures and re-evaluated the exploration options for the Year-2003 Mars-Earth-opposition launch opportunity, when in August, Mars will be the closest to Earth (34.6 million miles - 55.7 mkm) that it has been in 5000 years. The many missions under review were cut down to two rovers which will revert back to the airbag-landing concept that was successful with the Pathfinder. Arrival on the Martian surface, probably a dried lake bed or other area where water is believed to have once existed, is scheduled for January 2004.

The planned rovers would not be like Pathfinder, although they will use the same "bouncing ball" landing technology. Instead of a lander-type base station and a small, distance-limited rover, the 2004 rovers will be larger and contain the entire mission package, leaving behind only the deflated landing apparatus as they go on to explore a the largest range of the Martian surface that has ever been attempted.

The second decade will also see development of advanced technology in areas of science-instrument miniaturization and drilling to several hundred feet.

International participation, primarily from Italy and France, is expected to take the form of collateral missions, shared communications and launch resources, and in the development of sample collection and return systems.

"We have developed a campaign to explore Mars unparalleled in the history of space exploration. It will change and adapt over time in response to what we find with each mission. We will establish a sustained presence in orbit around Mars and on the surface with long-duration exploration of some of the most scientifically promising and intriguing places on the planet."

NASA scientist David Morrison said in 1999 that a manned mission to Mars could be launched as early as 2008, but this is now an outdated expectation. In light of the 1999 setbacks and NASA's announced plans for the next two decades, and more important, NASA's decision not to address a manned landing schedule, it is premature to make any kind of informed estimate on a manned mission, but a revised guesstimate would be more like 2024, assuming only minor setbacks in NASA's new planning. This guesstimate addresses a more interesting question about the first manned mission--the operational aspect it will follow. Because of the costs, the travel time, and the inability to realize scientific advantage from a manned orbital mission over unmanned platforms, the first manned mission is not likely to be orbital. Nor will it follow the same "near-landing" profile that was employed by Apollo missions prior to the Apollo 11 Moon landing. The first manned mission will go for the landing, and that commitment will require more extensive preparation and development.

Artist's concept of the ASPL Magnetoplasma Rocket

A new method of propulsion for manned space travel that would cut the transit time to Mars from ten months to four is being developed in association with NASA by Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory (ASPL). ASPL's Magnetoplasma design is important because reduced travel time means reduced exposure to radiation and weightlessness for the astronauts, which is a key concern for a ten-month-long, conventional, chemical-propellant powered trip.